Apple drops NDA on released iPhone software — Apple today gave up the fight to keep the NDA on released iPhone applications built with the iPhone SDK. The NDA has recieved much bad press and complaints from developers who wanted to communicate their experiences with developing programs for the iPod/iPhone platform.

[REDACTED] — Thank God—that's the last time I'm going to type that word for awhile. The meme is dead, long live the SDK. — As a way to celebrate the lifting of the NDA, we bring you some very special source code. To wile away the time between our product submission and the launch …

Expanding the Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server on Amazon EC2 — The backend servers that power the world of Internet Services have become increasingly diverse. With today's announcement that Microsoft Windows Server is available on Amazon EC2 we can now run the majority of popular software systems in the cloud.

Coming Soon: Amazon EC2 With Windows — We're getting ready to enable the use of Microsoft Windows Server on Amazon EC2 later this Fall. — You will be able to use Amazon EC2 to host highly scalable ASP.NET sites, high performance computing (HPC) clusters, media transcoders, SQL Server, and more.

The Future of Widgets on Facebook: Dead — When Facebook released their platform last year, the company generated more buzz in the Valley since Google went public. Thousands of developers flocked to their platform and now more than 40,000 applications have been built.

Facebook Redesign Succeeds: Widgets Are Dead — One of Facebook's main goals in implementing their redesign was to get rid of the clutter, which really means getting rid of the widgets and badges that sit on a user's profile but didn't really do anything. — Nick O'Neill over at All Facebook created …

Microsoft still paying people to search — Microsoft's latest effort to get people to use its search service is something called SearchPerks, which gives people points for using the search engine that can later be redeemed for prizes. — Users who agree to download a small program to track …

Live Search Perks - more rewards for using Live Search — It all started with Live Search Club, the somewhat maligned program to reward users for playing games using Live Search (and somewhat skewing search share counts, causing a bit of a scramble by Compete.com and others).

New Wii due by 2011 — What They Play has heard from multiple sources in the game development and publishing community that Nintendo is currently showing early presentations of its next home console hardware. Apparently set to hit the market “by 2011” the new device is said to be the true …

Blizzard wins Warcraft bot payout — World of Warcraft creator Blizzard has won $6m (£3.36m) in damages from the makers of a software ‘bot’. — The damages award comes after Blizzard won the first round of its legal battle against MDY Industries in July 2008.

Apple TV Gets An Upgrade — Without Steve Jobs' Help (AAPL) — A neat new feature is coming to Apple TV, Apple's (AAPL) set-top box, without Apple's help. No, it's not a DVD drive, which we suggested yesterday. But clever coders have devised an easier way to add more software to your Apple TV …

Netflix to stream movies from Starz — In an interesting move by Netflix and Starz, about 2,500 featured movies and concerts are now available for instant streaming over the Internet and using the Roku Netflix box. Because Starz offers first run “premium” content, this move expands …

Royalty decision could impact iTunes Store sales — When it comes to music sales, physical or otherwise, everyone seems to get a piece of the pie. You've got your mechanical royalties (sometimes called publishing royalties) as well as your artist royalties, both of which can change independently based …

Kevin Mitnick detained, released after Colombia trip — Since being released from prison eight years ago, Kevin Mitnick's brushes with the law have consisted of a few parking tickets and a citation for driving without a front license plate—that is, until he returned from a trip to Colombia two weeks ago.

RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later — On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against the people that should be the recording industry's best customers …

Studios Sue to Bar a DVD Copying Program — Six major movie studios sued RealNetworks, the Seattle-based digital media company, on Tuesday over its new $30 software program that allows people to make digital copies of their DVDs. — As the opening warning on every DVD indicates, Hollywood has bitterly opposed such copying.

Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What's Better? — Facebook allows for 2 networking tools: — Creating/ joining a Facebook group; — Creating/ joining a Facebook fan page. — While the major differences become evident only after you try out them first, we decided to create and promote both for Search Engine Journal:

Leaked: RIM's New BlackBerry Terminator 9900! — On AT&T waiting for the Bold? Visions of a BlackBerry Storm dancing thorugh your head? Screw it! Set your eyes on RIM's latest device, the BlackBerry Terminator. With no less than four machine guns, this baby is RIM's literal response …

Note-taking app Evernote gets an API — Evernote, the multiplatform note-taking app that I can't stop raving about, is opening up. New PC and Mac clients will get additional HTML import and export capabilities as well as accessibility from scripting tools like AppleScript.

Why Palm needs Android — The new Treo Pro runs Microsoft's Windows Mobile - but Palm may get even more mileage out of embracing Google's Android for future phones. Image: Palm — Unless you're Google, these look like rough times to launch a mobile operating system. — That puts Palm (PALM) in an awkward position.

Where Are All The RDF-based Semantic Web Apps? — RDF is the cornerstone of The Semantic Web, yet there still very few commercial RDF apps. — In the latest issue of Nodalities, a magazine about the Semantic Web by UK company Talis, there is an article by Talis CTO Ian Davis about the state of Semantic Web applications.

StumbleUpon 2.0: Good-bye, software toolbar — On Tuesday night StumbleUpon is changing the way users interact with the service, ditching the need for a software-based browser toolbar in place of a small frame that loads on top of the Web site you're on. Users with the toolbar installed …